New 13th Generation Dell PowerEdge Servers Launched

Today, we were privileged to be invited to the Dell’s media appreciation lunch where Dell launched its latest generation of Dell PowerEdge servers. KT Ong, the General Manager of the Commercial Business at Dell Malaysia was there to give the media some insights into some of the developments within Dell Malaysia as it ends the challenging financial year.

Let’s begin with the new PowerEdge servers. Dell is introducing several new servers including the PowerEdge R330, R230 rack servers and the PowerEdge T330 and T130 tower servers.

The theme of the presentation today was all about Dell’s commitment to be an enabler of SMB and alot was shared on Dell’s initiative to support the SMB in today’s challenging economic condition. For the first time, Dell’s entry-level server T130 feature’s Dell’s leading OpenManage systems portfolio which according to a report by Principled Technologies can boost the deployment speed by up to 40%.

The New Dell PowerEdge Servers

Dell PowerEdge R330 – a versatile rack server ideal for small businesses, remote offices of large institutions and OEM customers who are seeking enhanced hardware availability and serviceability. The PowerEdge R330 provides up to 56 percent more internal storage capacity than the previous generation server.

Dell PowerEdge R230 – a powerful and efficient rack server excellent for distributed applications in SMBs, hosting companies and OEM customers. This server has 100 percent more memory capacity, three times the maximum internal storage capacity and two times the I/O expansion compared to the previous generation server

Dell PowerEdge T330 – an expandable, rack able tower server for SMBs and departments and remote offices of large corporations that need greater internal storage. The PowerEdge T330 is designed for future growth, with up to four DDR4 memory slots and up to eight 3.5-inch hard drives.

Dell PowerEdge T130 – a powerful and reliable tower servers for driving collaboration and productivity applications in small offices/home offices (SOHO). The PowerEdge T130 provides two times the memory capacity compared to the previous generation server.

All of the Dell PowerEdge servers above are available worldwide today.

Developments Within Dell Malaysia

KT Ong shed some light into its journey as it embarked towards the end of its 2nd year since the privatisation of Dell. It’s recorded a relatively better performance owing to spike in purchases pre-GST. However the weakening of the MYR has resulted in many corporations holding back on its purchases.

Citing an example, KT shared that some organisations had to hold back on its IT expenses as the price of the servers has increased. Among the temporary measures introduced by Dell to assist the SMBs were the offering of an additional year of warranty for 3 year old PCs which would allow the SMBs to delay IT equipment upgrade for another year, which hopefully would allow them sufficient time to manage their cash flows.

Next, William Tan, Head of Enterprise Solutions, Dell Malaysia shared some light into its market position in the server segment. According to data obtained from IDC, it remains the market leader in the 1-socket rack server segment with an 11 point advantage over the closest competitor. In the 1-socket tower server unit share, Dell is closely trailing the market leader being just 1.6 points below the market leader from a 12 point gap 3 years ago.

He also pointed out that there are more than 600,000 SMEs in Malaysia which contributes to 35.9% of the nation’s GDP. This number is estimated to grow to 42% by 2020. As SMEs contribute more towards the GDP, their growth will need to be supported by the usage of ICT as a tool to support its strategic direction. On that note, Dell sees huge opportunity in this segment.

During lunch, I discussed with KT Ong about the impact of cloud solutions on the traditional server solutions. He shared that some organisations which migrated to the cloud platform finds that it is not as cost effective as the organisations grow larger. Then, there is also the issue with data sovereignty with data that are hosted on overseas cloud servers.

Furthermore, if an organisation decides to host with a cloud solutions provider which houses its datacenters locally, these servers would probably come from Dell as well so as far as he is concerned, the emergence of cloud does not pose a great threat to Dell Malaysia. In fact, Dell has embraced the cloud system recently as evident by the introduction of Dell’s industry first Hybrid Cloud Solution.